What IS a crossword?!

Right, let’s get started. No need to buckle up yet, just ease into your seats, and get comfortable

This first post is for those who don’t know what a crossword is. You really don’t need to read this if you know the very basics; simple stuff, but important nonetheless.

Open any newspaper, and one of the most common games played for leisure is the crossword. For those who don’t know what a crossword is, it’s basically a big square grid of squares. Selected squares are shaded out, and there is an accompanying set of clues, like this (click on image for a larger view) :

An empty crossword grid with clues on the right

As you can see, there are squares that are white, and squares that are shaded out (black). All the white squares are to be filled in with letters, such that a row/column of continuous/contiguous white squares forms a word. Get it? See the top left corner of the above grid, the first row. There are 6 continuous white blocks as you read from left to right, these 6 blocks are to be filled in with letters such that they form a 6-letter word. You can also read from top to bottom,  and there are 8 continuous squares there, forming a  8-letter word. Such a continuous row or column of the grid is to be filled in with a word, an ‘answer’. Here is an example of a grid with the ‘answers’ filled in.

A filled-in example grid

As you can see, every continuous row of white squares is filled in with a word, and the same applies for every continuous column. Note that ALL answers are filled in only left-to-right and top-to-bottom, not in a reverse fashion or in some other bizarre manner. Also, every word formed when read from left-to-right or top-to-bottom needs to be meaningful. Many letters are parts of 2 words, and thus serve as additional hints for solving.

Now, what words do you fill in as the answers? There is a variant of a crossword, where there are NO clues, you just have to find a set of words that fit the grid. Barring such exceptions, all types of crossword come with ‘clues’ which have to be cracked/solved to get the right words. This includes the cryptic crossword which this blog is all about.

Have a look at the clues list of the first crossword (the one not filled in with answers). Obviously, there needs to be a way to see where to write down the answers you get by cracking any clue. That’s where  the numbering of the squares come in. Let’s take a look at a clue from the crossword :

1. Approach for what the bill is worth (6)

The 1. refers to a location on the grid, and you can see that the top left corner square of the grid is marked 1.. So the answer you get by solving this clue needs to be filled in with its first letter on the square marked 1 . Now, there are two ways you can do that, either write it from left to right or from top to bottom. That’s where the Across and Down terminology comes in. Clues listed under the Across section refer to answers that have to be filled in from left-to-right, and those under the Down section are to be filled in from top-to-bottom. Therefore, the answer for the above clue is to be filled in from left-to-right, starting from the square marked 1. as it belongs to the Across section.

Crossword clues are referred to verbally by the Number, followed by whether it’s a Down or Across clue. So, 1 Across refers to an Across clue starting at square marked 1, 27 Down, to a Down clue starting at square marked 27 and so on.

Just by looking at the grid of the unsolved crossword, one can see that the answer for 6 Down is a word 4 letters long. The clue itself has the length of its answer in brackets. [ 6. As you go from zero to thousand, it is left out (4) ]

The need for the size in brackets is borne out by the following clue from the crossword :

5. Fatally drilled as a consequence of having nothing to do (5,2,5)

The (5,2,5) means that the answer consists of three words – the first of length 5, the second of length 2 and the third of length 5. The answer is to be filled in continuously with no spaces or commas or anything. The answer to the above clue, for example is bored to death, and is to be filled in as boredtodeath.

That’s it. Crack the clues to fill in the answers in the grid. Ridiculously simple, I know.

Doubts, suggestions, brickbats .. anything, comment below !

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